19 comments:

Expect more of this kind of control from the nanny-statists as they extend their reach into your lives.

I was always puzzled why the left was so worried about the right's interest in their bedrooms (a valid concern), yet ignore the pernicious exerting of control over personal decisions kudzuing daily into our federal, state, and local regulations.

Orwell wrote 1984 not about the Soviets, but about the West. And this is how he thought it'd occur: via the loss of liberty, bit by bit. Once national health care is installed, the State will completely own us. Through the IRS, they know all our finances. Through your doctor, they will know everything else. Whatever is not compulsory will be forbidden, and they will know everything.

My grandfather practiced law for 66 years (1909 to 1975 !), 28 of 'em as a judge. He instilled in me two truisims that seem to bear on the situation described in Volokh's commentary.

"The problem with bad laws is that they soon engender disrespect for the law."

"When you abandon your absolute standard of right and wrong you lose the entire basis for justice ... and society devolves to a mere struggle for power."

Either the state has the right to regulate relationships, or it does not. If it has the power to control who can hit on a dental hygienist, it has the power to ban homosexual behavior, non obstante SCOTUS and Lawrence. Or it does not, in either case.

The problem has clearly become that absent widely accepted overarching principles from which decisions flow logically, we have descended to an ad hoc approach based on policy, not principle.

In short, the very power struggle my grandfather described and, in 1968, predicted. And, yes, I increasingly disrespect the law ... but most particularly the dithering, narrow minds who make that law.

"Whatever is not compulsory will be forbidden, and they will know everything."

How far we've come from the Constitution that said unless the power was specifically given to the feds it was reserved to the people. Wow, the Constitution must do its breathing while doing yoga because that's officially upside down.

Remember Hillycare made it a crime to pay a doctor. I think we are a few years away from back alley medical care because waiting on the list will get you killed. What will the Canadians do when we are no longer there as a safety valve for their screwed socialist system?

Jonah Goldberg has a column today about how much he hates "The Children' as a rhetorical device and notes the disastrous outcome of meddling in vaccinations to protect "The Children." Now the industry is dead and government wants to step in and treat all prescription drugs similarly. Lovely.

I guess Democrats have decided that we've reached the ultimate in medical care and thus it doesn't matter if we no longer advance.

I will leave it to the experts to debate the legal aspects of this whole thing, but from a writer's viewpoint this is just a delightful article. I love it when someone comes up with an original idea for an article, and then follows through with quality writing.

Ricardo: Well, it's technically an op-ed rather than an article. Think of it as a blog post...

As for the subject: This is the result of attempting to legislate morality. It's "command-media" thinking; you can't just depend on social conventions or indoctrinated standards of behavior to discourage appropriate action; no, you have to have documentation describing everything. And anyone who's dealt with ISO knows that it's impossible for documentation to describe everything...and it usually winds up describing nothing.

I ran afoul of this type of professional conduct law as a single officer.

I had to go to the emergency room for a sprained ankle and had an interaction with a female civilian contract Doc there. She was hardly my doctor, never saw me naked, just palpated my ankle and gave me an ace bandage but we had met in a medical setting. I subsequently asked her out. She accepted the dinner, but begged off additional offers claiming the code of conduct issue.

Orwell wrote 1984 not about the Soviets, but about the West. And this is how he thought it'd occur: via the loss of liberty, bit by bit. Once national health care is installed, the State will completely own us. Through the IRS, they know all our finances. Through your doctor, they will know everything else.

Not true. You left out all the behavioral information Google collects. :)

In junior high, I fell for a stunning, precociously developed (she had breasts) classmate who wanted to become a dental hygenist. I suppose it was lucky I didn't live in Washington. Not that it would have mattered, as things turned out.

How amusing, that people like publications like the Wall Street Journal, that are appalled when the Supreme Court finds a right to sexual privacy, fighting vociferously to enforce laws to STOP sexual privacy - well suddenly when it applies to them, they want the courts to protect them. The Wall Street Journal has been actively campaigning for the repeal of the Lawrence V. Texas for the last five years. The same Wall Street Journal whose publish, Daniel Henninger has said that all gay people are pedophiles.

And is this the same Eugene Volokh who said "I'm not sure the Constitution protects such a right [to sexual privacy]" who is suddenly up in arms when it applies to straight people???

What bullshit.

Can you say hypocrite Mr. Volokh????

And this is a minor inconvenience for straight people. If you can't date your dental hygenist, then go find another dental hygenist to date. It's not that hard. Telling gay people that they can NEVER have sex - with any possible person that they can ever be attracted to - is a much tougher constraint.

Straight people suck. I enjoy when they have to suffer the same inconviences I deal with on a daily basis. Screw them.

As for the law in question, wouldn't it simplify matters greatly if we simply required all medical personnel to take a vow of perpetual celibacy as a condition of being granted a license to practice? It would remove all these difficult etiquette problems at a single stroke.